Original subtitles

[Narrator] How do you create a brand-new park

without any land to build it on?

When you first look at it, you're like,

this looks pretty scary.

[Narrator] What happens when mountains inspire a cutting-edge

design for an extraordinary art gallery?

When I first saw the watercolor my first thought is,

that's not a building. That's just a sketch.

[Narrator] And how do you turn an artist's sculpture

into a working office building?

It's like it could topple over at any time.

[Narrator] And keep it standing?

This is the age of the extraordinary.

[Hayley] It's like one of those insect eating plants,

only enormous and white.

[Narrator] Where ingenious engineers have unleashed

unchecked creativity.

Now their secrets are revealed.

As we discover the amazing stories of their construction.

This is an incredible feat of planning and engineering.

[Narrator] To try and understand,

"How Did They Build That?"

Hey, yeah. I'd like to place an insane architecture order.

All right, can I get a 100,000 square foot public park

with landscaped hills and I don't know,

maybe 350 species of trees, shrubs and flowers?

Oh, oh, and can you make the whole thing, like,

float above a river?

Yeah, cool. Thanks.

Now I'm not sure the genius who dreamed up this idea

was thinking too much about the builders

who'd actually have to make their dream reality,

but boy, did they deliver!

[Narrator] Parks and green spaces are always at a premium

in the world's cities.

And that's especially true on Manhattan Island.

With 1.6 million people packed into 22 square miles,

more was desperately desired.

[Corina] Uptown has Central Park.

Midtown Manhattan, it's a little short

on green space. Where would you squeeze it in?

[Narrator] That's exactly the challenge that the city faced.

So it decided the answer was to create something...

out of nothing.

The pier doesn't really look like prime real estate.

It's basically just a patch of freezing cold water

with some rotten wooden posts

where the pier once was.

[Narrator] The plan was extraordinary.

To take the site of two derelict piers on the Hudson River

and create a fantasy island to float above them,

growing out of 132 giant plant pots held up on 280 stilts

driven into the river bed below.

It would be like nothing engineers had ever seen.

You look at it and you're like, is that going to work?

[Narrator] And would push the team to its very limits

We were sort of clawing our way up these slopes.

[Narrator] This is Little Island,

a huge idea that took 17 specialized teams of engineers,

fabricators and gardeners 10 years to complete.

So how did they build it?

Manhattan's concrete jungle,

deep urban canyons created by ever more dense development.

In a city where one block of real estate can be worth up

to a billion dollars.

Opportunities for new green space are not only rare,

they come with high expectations.

If you want to create an outstanding attraction

in Manhattan these days,

it's going to have to be pretty special.

[Narrator] Up until now that has usually meant converting

something that's no longer used...

like this stretch of railroad viaduct.

Built on a mile and a half of old tracks and bridges,

the High Line linear park has been a huge hit.

Eight million visitors wander High Line's

elevated walkways each year.

While on the nearby Hudson River,

some of Manhattan's oldest piers are getting similar treatment,

having been abandoned after a glorious past.

During the first half of the 20th century,

the western stretch of Manhattan shoreline

was the gateway to the international superhighway.

Huge ocean liners steamed in from abroad

or prepared for great voyages.

Their excited passengers would come and go from huge jetties.

Among them was Pier 54.

Before the jet age, this pier and its neighbors

bustled with activity.

But by 2000, Pier 54 and many others have become disused

or damaged beyond repair.

A few years later, the Hudson River Park Trust

starts turning some of them into simple public spaces.

Putting grass and trees on an existing pier makes sense.

It's budget friendly.

[Narrator] But if the pier barely exists,

where do you start?

In 2010, the trust decides the site of Pier 54,

and its neighboring piers are next on the list.

And bring in British architects, Heatherwick Studios.

Among their recent projects are 1,000 trees in Shanghai,

a shopping center styled as a mountain covered

with 250,000 plants.

And The Hive,

a hyper-efficient, educational building

for the University of Singapore.

In 2012, they first visit the site.

[Matt] Looking at all these piers,

the ones that had fallen into disrepair

created these pile fields sticking up out of the water,

which were very serene and beautiful.

And that's what inspired us.

Why are we trying to invent something different

that goes on there?

Take what's already there and beautiful, the piles

and extend them to create the platforms to hold the landscape.

It was a really exciting moment because they thought, brilliant.

We don't have to just create a pavilion on top

of a normal pier.

We can create a new type of pier.

[Narrator] Over the next few weeks,

the new design idea is refined.

Then in October 2012, the Heatherwick team

flies into New York to meet its clients.

Just as the city is hit by Hurricane Sandy.

[Matt] One of our final concept presentations was

when Hurricane Sandy hit.

So the team were actually in Manhattan during that moment,

which kind of made it all incredibly real.

[Narrator] The largest Atlantic storm ever to hit New York,

Sandy arrives at high tide causing the subway

and road tunnels to flood.

It shows Matt and the team what the new park

will have to be able to deal with.

So how do we design something to last for the next 100 years?

[Narrator] Their solution is a design

that redefines how a park looks, is used, and is built.

280 pillars will rise up out of the Hudson

to support the futuristic new park.

132 of them topped with a series of unique and highly engineered

interlinking pots.

By altering the height and shape of each one,

they will create a landscape that rises and falls.

114 large trees and over 200,000 other plants

will be planted in the pots.

Weaving amongst them will be a third of a mile of walkways

and a 687-seat amphitheater for live performance.

It will be unlike any waterside park on the planet.

This is a classic Heatherwick Studios design.

It's original, it's elegant, and it's not obviously buildable.

[Narrator] But it was Celine Armstrong's job

to do just that.

[Celine] I looked at the design and said, uh-uh.

Go one more pass at simplifying it and then let's do this.

But people had already fallen in love with it, and it was,

let's figure it out.

[Narrator] In 2014, the project is green lit.

The first challenge for the engineers is figuring out how

to make the 2.5 acres of man-made park,

weighing tens of thousand of tons,

float above the Hudson River.

[Nehemiah] If you don't want your building to collapse,

you need to make sure the foundations are solid.

And the best way to do that is to anchor the building

to bedrock.

[Narrator] That though, is going to be far from easy.

[Celine] So building in federal waters,

the United States in an old shipping area is a nightmare.

You don't know what's beneath the sub-surface layer.

When people didn't want something,

they just threw it over the edge.

[Narrator] Once the engineers have surveyed the riverbed

and cleared obstructions,

the enormous job of creating a solid base

for the new park begins.

First, a marine crane brings a concrete pile into position.

Each is three feet in diameter, up to 200 feet long,

and tipped with a steel spike.

The piledriver then hammers it down into the riverbed

until it pierces the bedrock below.

The success of the complex build to come depends on the accuracy

of this pile-driving process.

When you're driving piles next to each other with pots

that sit on them, if they deflect,

they're gonna be too far apart or they're going to be too close

to each other.

And so making sure those piles are driven as vertically

as possible is really important.

[Celine] We had the best equipment where you drive

the pile using GPS, double-leader system.

We know it's spot on.

The engineer operating that equipment is like,

these are fantastic. Move on. Do more.

[Narrator] Then as the forest of columns is growing,

they discover a major problem.

There are a lot of checks and balances throughout the entire

process of this project.

And one of them was double surveying,

and we found, wait a minute, this survey doesn't match

your survey. What is going on?

[Narrator] Next.

What's causing the columns to move?

[Narrator] On the construction site of a new park

floating over New York's Hudson River,

engineers discover the concrete island's huge supporting pillars

have moved from where they were originally installed.

[Hayley] With a project this exact and expensive,

you can't afford surprises.

But the columns were deviating from the plan

and no one knew why.

[David] We eventually realized that it's like sticking

sticks in in a bowl of Jell-O.

And as you stick more sticks in that bowl of Jell-O,

it pushes the Jell-O.

And the Jell-O is pushing the piles that were already

installed, you know, further east.

[Celine] Luckily, we built the project east to west,

and so they all kind of just danced.

So our project was maybe just six inches further east

than anticipated. And it worked out.

[Narrator] With piledriving underway,

the next step is to create the tulip-shaped pots

that will sit on top of the pillars.

They need to make 132 of them and no two are the same.

[Matt] Because of the complexity and the need for kind

of accuracy that meant that we could actually create a geometry

in the computer and test it, make sure it worked.

Then we could actually give it to a CNC machine at Fort Miller,

which was the fabricators,

and it would literally cut out exactly what's in the computer.

And then you then cast the concrete against it.

[David] Each of these pots are made up of six different pieces,

and they were all prefabricated up at upstate New York.

Six different pieces are then brought together in Albany,

where they go from being kind of petals and column heads,

and they get assembled into a whole pot.

[Narrator] The next challenge to overcome is getting

the huge pots 130 miles from the factory to the pier site.

By road they'd need to be moved one at a time,

causing chaos in the city.

So the team turns to an age, old mode of transportation

[Matt] We were interested in using the river

to deliver materials to the site

because from a sustainability perspective,

it stops trucks going to the middle of Manhattan.

[Narrator] The Hudson River takes the load,

just as it once did for the building of the original piers

during the 19th century.

Each barge effortlessly transporting up to four pots

or 280 tons of concrete to the site.

In fact the barges prove crucial for the whole construction.

[David] They bring materials in via barge.

They work from the barge. They have a crane on the barge.

You know, so it really is full marine construction.

[Narrator] Even as the pots are craned into position,

the job of driving the pillars into the bedrock

continues to throw up problems.

[Celine] Okay. There is a boulder here.

We're just going to move the pile over, which also means

we need to redesign this pot.

So if your engineers could expedite that,

so by the time we're actually piledriving

and ready to install that pot, it's ready.

[Narrator] With the 132 pots in place on the pillars,

the team focuses on turning the concrete island

into a mature riverside oasis.

[Matt] This thing is a park for New Yorkers.

That's what it's for.

In order to that, we wanted to put trees.

Not just like little trees, proper trees, proper landscape.

[Narrator] To oversee the design,

they bring in landscape architect, Signe Nielson

who has no idea what she's letting herself into.

I was a bit naive, I would say.

And so I wasn't aware of all the challenges that arose,

but I was quickly aware that the topography,

the slopes that we had to accommodate in order

to create this undulation were going to be challenging.

[Narrator] By using 3D-computer modeling,

Signe could design a plan that would be nearly impossible

to fully visualize in her head.

One of the things that I would have my staff do is

literally walk me up every path and every curve,

so I could see what the slope was next to me,

the slope going down away from me,

where I wanted views directed.

It was a brilliant way to work.

[Hayley] While a 3D model is great for the designers

to visualize where they're going to put trees and plants,

crucially, it means the engineers could calculate

all of the loads to ensure that the columns could take it.

[Narrator] One cubic yard of dry soil weighs around 2,000 pounds,

3,000 when wet.

Add in several tons of trees and plants and it adds up fast.

[David] In our load calculations,

we figured that we could get about 300 and 350 tons per pile.

And we knew about how much each of these pots was gonna weigh,

and how much soil was necessary to carry the plants

and the trees that were needed.

[Narrator] With the engineers happy that the structure

will support the landscaping,

the race is on to get everything planted

before New York's bitter winter arrives.

[Singe] The 15th of December is generally our

climatological cutoff. And could we make it?

[Celine] A lot of the materials on the top side of our park

are temperature sensitive.

It got a bit tense over who was more important

given the clouds that we see rolling in.

We really need these guys to get done,

so clear out, so they can finish their work.

[Narrator] Another massive crane is brought in

to plant the huge trees in their individually-engineered pots.

[Signe] We modelled the root balls exactly to their size.

But the most challenging area of the park

was what we call the southwest.

It was the last area that we had access to.

Winter was breathing down our neck

and we had to get the plants in quickly.

And it is the steepest slopes.

[Narrator] Along with 35 species of tree,

the design involves planting 260 different varieties of plants,

and 66,000 bulbs.

[Signe] When it came to planting the perennials and the grasses,

this was done by hand.

We were sort of clawing our way up these slopes.

[Narrator] In 2021,

nine years after a new pier park was first discussed,

Little Island is ready for its debut.

And it's a huge hit with visitors.

The architecture is pretty nice.

I've never seen anything like it before.

The structure is amazing. Just like little like, pea pods

that it's built up on. It looks so cool.

It's like you are in New York, but you're floating.

Floating in the river or the sea.

[Narrator] New York has a completely unique new park

for its people

created by incredible design and engineering.

That's something you know, that I will forever be proud of.

And I'm just so fortunate to have the trust of the team

to do such crazy things.

[Narrator] In a city renowned

for its amazing architecture and engineering,

Little Island is proof that New York still holds a torch

for radical design.

This latest addition to the center of the Hudson is truly

raising the bar on what people can expect from a public space.

Next. A wild rocky mountain of titanium rips up the rule book

in downtown Denver.

Typically, when you visit a museum,

you just want to get inside quick as you can to see all

the amazing treasures they've got on show in there.

But this next building, it ain't no typical museum.

Its design is so radical and so mind-blowing,

I'd gladly pay the price of admission to just stand outside

and look at it.

[Daniel] The museum directors told me, Mr. Libeskind,

just don't give us a box.

[Narrator] Instead they got a design that would stretch

its engineers to their limit.

[Justin] I couldn't believe that something could be designed

in such a manner.

It looked like a piece of origami.

[Narrator] It's a building so unprecedented,

it took pioneering new technology to build it.

Absolutely mind-blowing.

It's like a spaceship has landed in the middle of Denver.

[Narrator] This is the Denver Museum of Art.

146,000 square feet of galleries.

At its core a structural skeleton as complex

as it was tough to assemble.

Not a right-angled corner or symmetrical wall in sight

and all the time gravity trying to pull it apart.

So how did they build it?

It's the year 2000.

And the city of Denver's art curators

have got a growing problem.

[Andrea] We were really driving in crowds.

We were over capacity.

We were building collections like crazy.

We were really growing.

And we were out of space.

So our board and our city decided that we should expand.

[Narrator] The existing museum, in Denver's civic district

sits among a classic urban grid of rectangles and cubes.

It's here the city agrees to put a completely new building,

and to design it, chooses one of the world's foremost architects,

Daniel Liebeskind.

To answer his anything, but a box brief,

Liebeskind takes his inspiration from the natural skyscrapers

beyond Denver,

the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains.

[Daniel] I think a museum has to be as interesting

as walking on those valleys or slopes.

As you look at Denver, you see the mountain peaks,

you see the snow, you see the valley.

My design was inspired to connect people as the way

they're connected when they climb those mountains,

to have that sense of space, to have the sense of light,

that sense of wow.

[Narrator] Libeskind takes a rather unusual approach

to convince his clients of his idea.

When I first saw the watercolor that he did of the sort of

spiky building, my first thought is,

that's not a building. That's just a sketch.

That's a piece of art.

[Narrator] Over the next two and a half years,

the design is worked into a full-scale, detailed proposal.

Inside Denver's new art museum will be a series of zigzagging

gallery spaces all flowing through huge openings

and stairways.

This will be supported by a series of internal steel beams

that are interconnected with one another to create

an angular structure reminiscent of a ship's hull,

And tipped with a huge 100-foot prow

that stretches out over the neighboring 13th Street.

The building will feature 20 vast inwardly sloping panes,

all different and clad with 9,000 shimmering plates.

This is architecture that will pioneer a new vision

for a public art gallery.

It will be like nothing the city has ever seen.

[Corina] Architecturally, Denver has been pretty rectangular,

but this building doesn't just break the mold,

it melts it down.

[Daniel] The Denver Art Museum is an unprecedented building.

That's what it is.

There's never been a building like this before.

[Narrator] Unprecedented designs come

with unprecedented challenges.

And this, with its sheer angles and jutting overhangs,

has the engineers already wondering

how they're going to build it.

[Carla] The biggest challenge for the project was

the complexity of the geometry. There is no doubt.

And it would have been next to impossible to build

if we were drawing everything by hand,

[Narrator] It's 2000, and lead structural engineer,

Atila Zekioglu turns to technology that is still

in its infancy to help,

the latest 3D computer-aided design.

[Atila] We decided that we were going to use a revolutionary

step into using 3D,

not only documenting the structural system in 3D,

but actually conceiving it in 3D, analyzing it,

designing it in 3D.

[Narrator] This cutting-edge software can solve

hugely complex geometric problems that humans cannot.

The result is a series of computer-generated models

that reveal the scale of the challenge the engineers face

in building it.

[Atila] It's like our moment in the candy store

and we were just looking at this model,

spinning it around, dissecting it.

And it became very clear that the slanted walls

were not symmetrical.

[Narrator] The lack of symmetry means

balancing the gravitational forces within the structure

will be impossible using conventional building methods,

such as concrete form work.

So the engineers come up with a slimline,

but very strong solution.

Concrete will be used,

but only to create a hugely strong base pad.

In an idea borrowed from ship building,

huge girders will be placed in the concrete floors,

then linked to beams in the slanted walls

to stop them from pushing out.

It will take more than 2,700 tons of steel beams

bolted together to create the precise and unique skeleton

for the entire building.

This will be very complex to build,

but will solve all of their major problems at once.

[J.R.] The steel framework, the beams and the girders

make up one resisting system for the building.

[Atila] This was something that had not been done to date

and it is an elegant solution to achieve the mission.

[Narrator] Or at least it looked like an elegant solution.

But J.R. Barker who hails from a proud family of iron workers,

could see there was a problem.

[J.R.] They started to look at the construction documents

and they got a little nervous.

The problem we had was like building a house of cards.

At any given moment, it wants to fall flat on you.

They said, we don't think we can build this.

[Narrator] Next. Can the team pull it off?

[Narrator] In Denver the construction team

has a blueprint for an extraordinary new art museum,

but no blueprint for how to build it.

The engineers realize the computer model gives no

information on which order to assemble

the 3,100 pieces of steel.

Or how to support it while they put it together.

[Justin] Your traditional building methods of just

building from the ground up did not work for this job.

[Narrator] Justin Mitchell is one of the engineers

on the ground working out how to build it.

[Justin] From an engineering aspect,

we had to figure out,

how do we keep this thing from falling over

and leaning outward as we're constructing it?

[Narrator] Their solution is to bring in specially designed

shoring towers to prop up each section as it's built.

[Justin] We had 54 of them out here.

Some of them went through the middle of the structure.

We had them leaning in or out.

They were the elements that kept this thing from falling over.

[Carla] They were holding up these angles until we had

the connecting piece.

So we literally broke the building down into elements

and built it kind of like an erector set.

[Narrator] Each bespoke joint has to be individually made

and has to be exact, but incredibly,

despite this complexity,

building using the computer modeling in harness with

human engineering experience, seems to be working.

[J.R.] These are rough ironworker guys.

They were planning their day on the computer screen and saying,

this is what we're going to build today.

All the partners working together.

It worked so well that, that was the biggest surprise,

not on how difficult it was to build this,

but how smoothly and well the process actually worked.

[Narrator] Then, as the building is coming together,

they hit a problem.

One day we got a connection that didn't fit.

And it really freaked out the entire construction team.

How in the world did this happen?

It's been going so well.

[Narrator] It's a serious issue, but some on-site detective work

soon identifies the cause, human error.

[J.R.] They actually traced that right back to an individual

in the fabrication shop who on a trimmed corner

of a piece of plate, they had trimmed an inch off

the corner to make it fit just right.

And so everything was off one inch.

[Narrator] Having discovered the error,

the plate is remade and construction continues.

Barker and his team can't afford any mistakes

with the next installation,

the steel that will become the building's signature feature.

[J.R.] One of them would have been what we call

the prow of the ship, which the largest piece

of steel in the entire project, it was that massive center spire

that went from there out over the street.

[Narrator] The 85-foot steel gives crucial

strength to the prow and leads up to the razor sharp tip

as it juts out 167 feet out and 100 feet high

over a busy 13th Street.

I think the most nerve-wracking moment might have been

the construction over the street of that space,

and how it supports itself.

[Narrator] The huge beam must be cantilevered,

or supported at just one end

to receive the bolts which will hold it in position.

[Justin] We had shoring towers leaning out away from the road,

but yet still holding part of the prow of the ship

or the prow of the structure here.

[Narrator] After a whole year spent assembling the steel frame

using over 50,000 bolts,

the construction supports are taken away.

It's a huge moment for the team,

when they see whether the computer-generated design

built by humans will stand up on its own.

[J.R.] When we removed those shores,

there were no corrective actions required.

It fell right into place. It was just elation.

[Narrator] The framework is in place,

but now it needs a skin to cover the 200,000 square feet.

They consider concrete, and stone laminate,

but they're dismissed as either too heavy

or too dull to look at.

Finally, the engineers turn to a cutting-edge material

that can be found glinting off satellites,

integrated into warships,

and their attack aircraft,

titanium alloy.

Titanium is used on the underside of spacecrafts

because it's significantly lighter than steel,

but at the same time, just as strong.

And it doesn't corrode as easily.

[Narrator] This extraordinary material can also cope with

Denver's high-desert weather.

[Carla] Denver's climate is incredibly varied.

You can have snow one morning,

and by the afternoon it's 70 degrees and sunny.

[Ellie] Unlike steel, titanium doesn't expand or contract

when it gets hot or cold, so it's absolutely,

ideally suited to Denver's extreme temperatures.

[Narrator] It's also significantly

more expensive than most alternatives.

And hadn't been budgeted for.

Quite honestly, I didn't choose it.

We didn't have enough money to choose that material,

but we had a great donor who donated the titanium.

And that was such a fantastic thing to have in those shapes

that I built. Brings that light to the city.

And remarkably fits the new city that it's built in.

[Narrator] It also hides the crucial,

but not so pretty insulation underneath,

essential for protecting the building from Denver's

huge variations in humidity and temperature.

Each layer behind the titanium has a special job to do.

On the outside, we have the titanium panel,

two layers of insulation, and we have a mesh that

separates it from the insulation on the building,

so that air is allowed to flow behind the panels.

This allows the panels to breathe with the summer heating

of the building or the cooling in the winter.

And then behind that, you have a foam.

And then that's covered with a fire resistant,

spray-on concrete, which provides the final layer.

[Narrator] The cladding is installed ahead of time,

and thanks to the computer-aided design and build process,

the project is finished three months ahead of schedule.

In 2006, three years after construction began,

the ground-breaking new Denver Art Museum

opens to the public.

[Carla] It was certainly exciting on the opening days

of the project when people came in and looked up.

And you could see their imagination run wild.

When it was first built, people weren't sure.

Some people didn't love it.

And now it's just a part of the fabric of who we are

and how we identify ourselves.

That's when you know that it's been embraced

[Daniel] When I built it, they said maximum 200,000 people

will come to the building.

Now we have figures of over a million.

[Narrator] While the Denver public enjoys the experience

of the new museum, the experience of creating the

building itself remains powerful in the team who built it.

[J.R.] My father was an ironworker,

but he died when I was in high school.

He never got to see what I do.

He never got to see that I was the epitome of what he himself

longed to be in his life.

And I was able to bring my mother to the site

and show her what I'd been able to do.

It was a remarkable moment. I'm sorry.

[Justin] We were at the forefront of what was possible

with 3D modelling.

Also on the forefront of what's possible with architecture.

We proved that we could construct it and build it.

Regular viewers of this show know that architects just love

to break the rules.

In this next ahead-of-its-time building,

they're going to have thousands of book borrowers

breaking the rules too.

Because no matter how much you shush folks,

this is one library building,

everyone will want to shout about.

- [Man] Shh. - Sorry.

[Narrator] It's the 1990s.

And in the city of Nice in the south of France,

something strange is about to happen.

They needed a new office for the staff

who worked at the city library.

And they want something that was, well,

out of the ordinary.

And it would be fair to say that is what they got.

[Nehemiah] It's such an unusual shape for building.

It's like it can topple over at any time.

[Narrator] This is La Tete Carree.

Or as it's also known, Thinking Inside the Box,

the product of an artist's fevered imagination

that was a real pain in the neck to build.

[Corina] It's not easy for a building to also be a sculpture.

[Narrator] It needed to be strong enough to hold up

four floors of office space,

and still appear to be an elegant sculpture

that looked solid while still letting in the light.

So how did they build it?